


Oh, That Lizard...

by pillow_fort_fanatic



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Friendship, Nonsense, Shapeshifter Loki (Marvel), Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26015620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pillow_fort_fanatic/pseuds/pillow_fort_fanatic
Summary: Steve chats with Loki after another day on the job. Well, as much as you can chat with a Norse god who's turned himself into a lizard, that is.
Relationships: Loki & Steve Rogers
Comments: 6
Kudos: 30





	Oh, That Lizard...

“Okay.” Steve engaged the deadbolt of his apartment door, and it secured their privacy with a soft click. “It’s safe. You can come out now, Loki.”

Nothing happened.

He waited a moment before heaving a sigh. “I don’t wear the shield inside,” he reached back over his shoulder to tap on its rim indicatively, “so I hope you’re, like, holding onto my shirt or something.” When there was still no response, Steve eased the shield off his back and hung it on its hook near the door.

“Okay, at least move to where I can see you’re still there.” His voice dropped to a mumble, “I feel kinda dumb talking to myself like this.” Finally, a gentle scuttle against his back assured him he’d been heard, and a scaly little head was followed onto his shoulder by two tiny reptilian feet. “Thanks. Although, you could shift back now? Any time now. There’s, um, no bugs in here.”

As he spoke, Steve propped up a foot on the chair he kept handy for just this purpose and started unlacing his first boot. It was second nature by now after so many years as Captain America, and the mindless routine of changing back into civilian clothes was soothing. Great way to put the press of battle behind him.

“You’d probably like bugs while you’re like this, wouldn’t you? Or would you? I really don’t know how shapeshifting works. It could be real useful, though, switching up your appetite with each change, you know?”

He switched his stance to undo the other boot.

“Say you’re somewhere where food is scarce: you just shift down to an ant or something and suddenly you’ve got exponentially more to eat without having to affect the food source in any way. If your appetite is anything like your brother’s,” he bent down to grab both boots and put them in their place by the door, “I could see how that would come in handy. But you can’t shift other people, can you? Just, oh, whaddya call it? Put a glamor over them?”

Sock-footed, the superhero padded down the short hall to his bedroom.

“I do listen, see? It’s just that you talk so much, and you expect everyone to treat you like a prince‒” he paused, physically and verbally, so that Loki could shift back and tell him off for implying he deserved anything less than royal treatment, and was a little shocked when nothing happened. With a little shake of his head, he continued, “‒which makes it hard for any of us to stay engaged. Clint says… Well never mind what Clint says. Point is, I do listen, even when you talk about magic like we’re idiots for not knowing what’s going on, and I’m trying to figure out how to make this teamwork thing work. We all are.”

Quick movements had already produced the clothes he intended to change into, and now he stopped in front of the bureau mirror. “I can’t get this costume off with you sitting there,” he informed the reflection of the shoulder-perched lizard, “so you’ve gotta move now.”

The only movement from the lizard was a lazy eye blink.

“I’m serious, Loki. I don’t want to have to manhandle you, but you know I will if I’ve gotta.” He didn’t have much experience with reptiles, so he really just wanted it to move on its own but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Gingerly, and with a desperate hope he wasn’t doing this wrong, he scooped his companion up by his belly. “Just gonna set you here for a bit, little guy.”

“I guess it could be worse,” Steve considered as he shimmied out of his costume and into civilian clothes. “Seems like Thor’s always telling that story about you turning into a snake and stabbing him, so at least I don’t have a dagger sticking out of me yet. Don’t,” he warned with a deliberately pointed finger, “take that as an invitation to try. I don’t need to show up in the med-bay explaining that, ‘no, I didn’t take a hit in that last battle, it’s just that I got stabbed by a bearded dragon after I got back here. Not a _dragon_ dragon, no, a _bearded_ dragon. A tiny lizard.’ The nurses would look at me weird.

“Okay, so you’re right: they already look at me weird. Being a hero is just weird, no matter what decade you’re in. Was it any easier being a villain?”

Lizard-Loki blinked at him again.

“Nah, I didn’t think so. My theory, and this is just a theory,” the plain gray t-shirt settled into place and Steve leaned forward on his hands against the bureau, decreasing the distance between them as if to share a secret, “but my theory is that being different is just all around tough. Doesn’t matter what the difference is, it’s just honest-to-goodness tough and weird and messy.”

He scooped the lizard up to bring him along, back down the hall to the kitchenette. Sure, he could head out to the shared kitchen to eat whatever takeout his teammates had ordered, but sometimes it was just nice to do a little cooking for himself. There were veggies and chicken breasts in the fridge and he had that electric skillet-thing Pepper got him for Christmas from Tony. 

“Jumping back to the bugs thing: are you hungry? How does stir fry sound? I make a pretty mean stir fry, though it was a steep learning curve. See, the first time I made it...”

Steve kept up the one-sided banter with his observant little houseguest as he made enough for both of them, and he tried not to be too annoyed when Loki didn’t shift back to eat. It just meant that there were leftovers for tomorrow, he figured, and if Loki wanted to stay a bearded dragon then Loki could stay a bearded dragon. After all, no one aside from Thor had yet succeeded in making the god do anything he didn’t feel like doing, and Steve was off-duty and sure wasn’t going to be the one to try.

When Loki still hadn’t shifted back by the time Steve was ready to call it a night, he grabbed a spare blanket to fold into a makeshift pallet for his guest. On further thought, he grabbed a desk lamp and set it up over the blanket on the kitchen counter, hoping the lamp would keep the area warm without setting the blanket on fire overnight. Lizards liked heat lamps, right?

Loki was going to laugh so hard at him later for being kind and accommodating, but Steve could deal with that. Steve was a good person, and good people did the right thing even when it felt a little foolish. He could handle feeling a little foolish.

Three days later, Loki himself walked uninvited and unannounced into the apartment and found Steve basking in the sun with a lizard on his shoulder, just as Nat had promised he would.

Turned out that Loki had never turned himself into a bearded dragon.

Ever.

Not once in his millennia of existence.

And ‘a little foolish’ didn’t quite do justice to what Steve felt.

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Captain America, pet bearded dragon, Cap’s apartment


End file.
